This week’s theme
Words with multiple meanings

This week’s words
arete
coprology
noodle
hock


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PRONUNCIATION:

(hok, rhymes with clock)

MEANING:

verb tr.:	To disable by cutting the tendons of the hock; to hamstring; to make ineffective. (Also see hamstring and hough.)
noun:	The joint in the hind leg of a quadruped animal, such as a horse, corresponding anatomically to the human ankle.
verb tr.:	To pawn.
noun:	1. The state of being pawned.
	2. Debt.
	3. Prison.
verb tr.:	To forcefully spit out something, such as phlegm.

ETYMOLOGY:

For the leg-related senses: a variant of hough, from Old English hoh (heel).
For the pawn-related senses: from Dutch hok (pen, hutch, kennel, prison).
For the spit-related sense: a variant of hawk, of imitative origin.
Earliest documented use: 1540.

NOTES:

NOTES: This word has several unrelated lives. A horse has hocks, a debtor may be in hock, a person may hock a loogie, and a Brit may once have ordered hock, a Rhine wine named for Hochheim, with dinner. English looked at one syllable and decided to sublet it.

USAGE:

“My therapist actually asked me, ‘What do you like about horses?’ And I said, ‘Everything ... everything from the hock and the hoof to the nostrils and the thighs and the neck and the way the neck curves and the muscles along the flank.’”
Alexa Tsoulis-Reay; Atypical: What it Means to See Yourself as Different; New York (New York); Feb 23, 2015.

“Huck Cheever is a gambling addict who has hocked his possessions.”
David Denby; Games of Chance; The New Yorker; May 14, 2007.

“Midmovie, he leaned over and hocked a loogie on the wall next to him.”
Worst Dates Ever!; Cosmopolitan (New York); Mar 2015.

See more usage examples of hock in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: